Sunday, October 17, 2010

OKTOBERFEST A-GO-GO

While it's still October (or, as I like to call it, 'ROCKtober'), here's a whole beer garden's worth of German "schlager" music for a maniac's Oktoberfest. Most of these songs are remakes of Anglo-America hits. They're sometimes sung in German (or inaccurate English), and performed in a gleefully tasteless, absurdly upbeat party-ready delirium. The closest analogy in American music would be Vegas-type lounge music, but even the cheesiest of those swingin' cats had a bit of jazz in them. This stuff is more like oom-pah tarted up for the '60s and '70s, trading in lederhosen for eye-poppingly colorful wide collar shirts and bell-bottom flared pants. It's quite ridiculously entertaining, and it all comes from my collection of used vinyl. Vee hef ways of making you LAFF! [original artist's name in brackets]OKTOBERFEST A-GO-GO

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Rolf Kühn's "Paranoid" cover is topped by the equally hilarious and incredible cover by Cindy & Bert "Der Hund von Baskerville", straight out of the "What WERE they thinking" department. You can find it on youtube.

9. Bernd Spier "Danke Shoen" [Wayne Newton...or was this a German original?]The German original of Danke Schön" was first recorded in 1962 by Bert Kaempfert. Wayne Newton's '63 version of it gained all the fame and it appears Bernd Spier recorded this 1964 (he used it as a standard in all his concerts).

Just a small point.A friend of mine is working in Munich just now, and he was just telling me that Oktoberfest actually starts in September!No, i dunno what the hell those kerazee Germans are playing at either, just thought i'd share the info.Great compilation though, thanks.

While Karel Gott is Czech actually he is/was very popular in Germany. Here's his puszta-interpretation of Paint it Black named "Rot und Schwarz" (red and black). I'm afraid to say that I enjoy it more than the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwJp_Xh8lP0